Culture Representation: The documentary film “After Death” features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American, one Latino and two Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Various people give their testimonials about having near-death experiences where they believe they went to heaven or hell, even though these spiritual experiences are not considered to be provable through science.
Culture Audience: “After Death” will appeal primarily to people who want to watch a documentary that promotes one-sided Christian teachings along with stories of near-death experiences.
Don Piper in “After Death” (Photo courtesy of Angel Studios)
“After Death” is essentially a series of scenes of people talking about experiencing what they believe to be heaven or hell when they came close to death or were considered to be clinically dead. The movie has some re-enactments with actors. The testimonials of near-death experiences seem sincere, but the documentary’s filmmakers only chose to interview people with Christian points of view, ignoring other religions. Most of the interviewees have authored books, so there’s a sales agenda too.
Directed by Stephen Gray and Chris Radtke, “After Death” is from Angel Studios, a faith-based company that is focused on Christian content. Even so, the movie could have done a much better job of acknowledging that these spiritual experiences don’t only happen to Christians. Instead, the movie gets very preachy in presenting these Christian points of view as the “right” way to think about issues pertaining to life after death.
There isn’t much diversity in the types of people who were selected to be interviewed in this documentary. Most are upper-middle-class white Americans who have “doctor” as part of their titles. The stories are fascinating, but “After Death” has erratic film editing that has a frustrating tendency to interrupt someone’s story and then revisit it later in the movie. It’s meant to keep viewers in suspense to hear the rest of the story, but it just comes across as sloppy filmmaking.
Dale Black, a former airplane pilot, nearly died in plane crash in 1969, in Burbank, California. He describes having an out-of-body experience where he could see himself and two other pilots on the ground within five feet of each other after the crash. He says that this experience convinced him that he has a spirit that’s separate from his body.
Dr. Michael Sabom, a cardiologist, says he was initially a skeptic about life after death until he talked to resuscitated patients. He adds, “There’s a process of dying,” but that medically, death cannot fully be measured.
Howard Storm was a 38-year-old professor and an atheist who was living in Paris with his wife in 1985, when he began experiencing severe abdominal pain. He was rushed to a hospital, where he didn’t get immediate care because a doctor wasn’t available to treat him right away. Storm says he fell into a coma and had a near-death experience that he describes in the movie as a miraculous recovery.
Dr. Jeffrey Long, an oncologist and researcher, says that common near death experiences are people saying that they felt they left their bodies and watched people or things on Earth, such as the place where they died. Other common experiences include seeing a light, hearing music, and seeing the spirits of dead people.
Don Piper, an author, says that his own near-death experience happened when he was in a car accident in Huntsville, Texas, in 1989. During the accident, the car’s steering wheel went into his chest. Also interviewed are district attorney investigator Swen Spjut and Anita Onarecker Wood, an eyewitness at the scene of Piper’s accident. Wood doesn’t have much to add except to confirm that Piper looked like he was dead, and she was shocked that someone could survive the injuries that he had.
Dr. Mary Neal, an orthopedic surgeon, describes her own near-death experience that happened when she was kayaking in Chile while she was on a trip with her husband. During this kayaking trip, she fell down a waterfall in an accident. She says that while she was unconscious, she never felt more alive, and she felt like she was being held by Jesus Christ.
Not all of these near-death experiences are stories that resulted in bliss and happiness. Don Piper says that after he got a glimpse of what he believes is heaven, he didn’t want to go back to his life on Earth. He says that this led him to experience depression and wishing that he had died in his car accident so that he could be in heaven. Don’s wife Eva Piper says she felt confused over why Don had a period of time when he didn’t seem to be happy to be back to his life after the car accident.
Steve Kang, a former Buddhist who converted to Christianity, describes a life-changing moment that doesn’t seem like a near-death experience but more like a drug-induced hallucination. Kang, a South Korean immigrant, says he felt like an outsider in school when he was a kid. As a teenager in high school, he was heavily involved in drugs. In 1998, when he was a teenager and a self-described “stoner,” he became suicidal and cut himself with a knife, but he saw a vision of a “grandpa spirit” telling him not to kill himself. Kang says he turned his life around after that incident.
Paul Ojeda, a recovering cocaine addict and founder of Austin Powerhouse Church, says his near-death experience came during a drug overdose. He says he didn’t see a bright light but saw a dark tunnel. He sensed that he was in some kind of hell, and when he tried to justify his life in his mind, the tunnel sped up faster and faster. Ojeda says he pleaded for God’s help and obviously ended up coming out alive from this experience.
Howard Storm, a minister, says his near-death experience was also hellish. He describes feeling like he was in a tunnel where people were sadistically trying to tear him apart. Storm describes being rescued by a light force that he believes was God. Storm says that at the time he had this experience, he had family relationships that were “troubled.”
Storm says he had an unhappy childhood, when his father was abusive to him, which caused Storm be in the habit of numbing his emotions. After his near-death experience, Storm says he became a religious “zealot” (his words), and this life change led to the end of his marriage. He adds that his wife left him and “poisoned” their kids against him, but he eventually reconciled with his father.
Also interviewed are neurologist Dr. Ajmal Zemmar and neurosurgeon Dr. Karl Greene, two after-life believers who share a few experiences that they had with patients which convinced these doctors that there is another state of being after death. The International Association of Near-Death Experiences is mentioned as a group that provides support and other resources for people with these experiences. The documentary does not interview any skeptics to provide any counter-arguments.
If someone believes that human death is final, watching “After Death” probably won’t change that person’s mind. However, the anecdotes and stories presented in the movie can be considered compelling arguments. It’s too bad that many of these stories end up being lectures about Christianity instead of being presented as universally relatable to all people, regardless if they are religious or not.
Angel Studios released “After Death” in U.S. cinemas on October 27, 2023.
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Black Barbie: A Documentary” features a predominantly African American group of people (and some white people, Latin people, and Asians) discussing the history of black Barbie dolls and/or racial issues for Barbie dolls.
Culture Clash: There is an ongoing struggle for black Barbie dolls to not be perceived as inferior or less important than white Barbie dolls.
Culture Audience: “Black Barbie: A Documentary” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching a documentary about the intersection of Barbie dolls with African American history.
Stacey McBride-Irby, Kitty Black Perkins and Beulah Mae Mitchell in “Black Barbie: A Documentary” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
“Black Barbie: A Documentary” is essential viewing not just for people who are interested in this often-overlooked part of Barbie doll history but also for people who aren’t fans of Barbie dolls but want to watch a fascinating pop culture documentary. The movie (which has a total running time of 100 minutes) packs in a lot of different layers that are mostly cohesive. The movie is fairly ambitious in how it puts certain things in a broader historical and sociological context, thereby avoiding being a formulaic Barbie doll documentary that would probably ignore these larger issues.
Directed by Lagueria Davis (who wrote and spoke the movie’s narration and is one of the movie’s producers), “Black Barbie: A Documentary” had its world premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film & TV Festival and has since made the rounds at numerous other festivals, including its New York premiere at the Urbanworld Festival. Davis has said in many interviews that it took her 12 years to make this documentary. It shows in the amount of meticulous research in “Black Barbie: A Documentary,” which makes everything easier to understand by including a timeline of events.
This not a documentary made by a “Barbie fangirl.” In fact, in her narration, Davis (who occasionally appears on screen in the movie) tells viewers from the beginning that in her childhood, she didn’t even like Barbie dolls and never had an interest in them. She says that what inspired her to make this documentary was hearing stories from her aunt Beulah Mae Mitchell, who was one of the first black employees for Mattel, the Barbie toy manufacturing company, where Mitchell worked from 1955 to 1999.
The first Barbie doll, which went on sale to the mass market in 1959, was invented by Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler and was inspired by Ruth’s real-life daughter Barbara. Barbie dolls became a hit because they were not the type of shapeless woman dolls that were usually being sold at the time but were dolls designed to emulate the curves and contours of a fully developed woman. The first black Barbie doll went on sale in 1968, at the height of the Black Power movement.
Mitchell was mostly a receptionist throughout her career at Mattel, but she was privy to a lot of insider information that she shares in the documentary. Mitchell also kept many valuable mementos and memorabilia from her time with Mattel, some of which is shown in this documentary and would be right at home in a Barbie museum. In “Black Barbie: A Documentary,” Mitchell describes Ruth Handler as a kind and generous boss who always asked for feedback from employees on how to improve the company. Nevertheless, for years, Mattel had a blind spot or resistance to the idea of Mattel making Barbie dolls that were any race other than white.
Mitchell says part of that resistance came from cultural conditioning at the time in the United States, when it was more acceptable to “erase” people of color from representation in many areas of life where people of color existed. The image manufactured for Barbie at the time and which still exists today is that Barbie leads a life of glamour and privilege, which are often out of reach for people who are treated as being on the margins of society.
In the documentary, Mitchell comments: “My mother loved dolls. I loved dolls. I loved fashion.” Mitchell remembers that she was growing up, she was so used to seeing only white dolls being sold as the “pretty dolls,” that “it didn’t occur to me” that dolls that weren’t white could be included as “pretty dolls” too. She remembers the usual black dolls that were around in her childhood were the Aunt Jemima dolls that were considered frumpy and unattractive.
The reasons why the first black Barbie wasn’t introduced until 1968 had as much to do with race as economics. There was deep skepticism that there would be enough demand for black Barbie dolls to make the dolls a profitable investment for Mattel. The underlying doubt was that although black people might buy black Barbie dolls, what about white people, the majority race that was buying Barbie dolls?
“Black Barbie: A Documentary” briefly goes off on an interesting but necessary tangent by mentioning the famous Clark doll tests of 1947, as an example of how dolls can often influence how young people think of racial differences. Psychologist spouses Mamie Clark and Kenneth Clark conducted tests with white and black children by giving them a choice between choosing a white baby doll or black baby doll. The children almost always chose the white dolls, thereby showing how white supremacist racism can be internalized from a very young age.
These test results were used successfully in arguments in favor of making racial segregation illegal in U.S. public education in the 1954 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. However, legislating racial justice in public education is one thing. Trying to do that in the business world is another thing.
As is often the case when white-owned corporate companies exclude representation of races that aren’t white, the excluded races create their own businesses. “Black Barbie: The Documentary” admirably mentions the importance of Shindana Toys, a co-op company that was the first major manufacturer of black dolls and became very successful at it. Shindana Toys, which was in business from 1968 to 1983, was a division of Operation Bootstrap Inc.
Mattel noticed the success of Shindana and saw that there was a viable economic demand to make Barbie dolls more racially inclusive. And so, the first black Barbie doll was launched in 1968. Her name was Christie, who was marketed as a friend of Barbie’s. In 1969, another black Barbie doll named Julia was introduced. Julia was inspired by Diahann Carroll’s title character in the TV comedy series “Julia,” where Carroll starred as a young widowed mother who is a nurse.
Eventually, Mattel responded to requests from consumers to make people of color dolls not just as sidekick friends to Barbie but as dolls named Barbie. Kitty Black Perkins was the designer of Mattel’s first black doll named Barbie, which was introduced in 1979 and went on sale in 1980. Black Perkins, who worked at Mattel from 1976 to 2003, is considered the most influential person at Mattel in creating a wider range of black Barbie dolls.
Black Perkins’ interviews in the documentary are among the most insightful. She mentions that a child psychologist was brough in by Mattel to assess her work when designing Mattel’s first black doll named Barbie. Black Perkins says that psychologist backed off when it was obvious that Black Perkins, as an African American, knew better than the psychologist on what should be done in creating a black Barbie doll. She also says that Mattel gave very little promotion to the first black Barbie doll that she designed.
Black Perkins mentored Stacey McBride-Irby, a Mattel designer who continued Black Perkins’ legacy in creating new black Barbie dolls, when McBride-Irby worked for Mattel from 1996 to 2011. One of the documentary’s highlights is showing Mitchell, Black Perkins and McBride-Irby—three generations of black women who have long histories with Mattel’s Barbie dolls—sitting down together for a talk. Their conversation doesn’t look forced or contrived. It’s a joy to watch. McBride-Irby mentions that her own daughter was an influence in many of McBride Irby’s design decisions for black Barbie dolls.
“Black Barbie: A Documentary” also has the expected array of talking head interviews with Barbie doll collectors, historians, entertainers, cultural experts and former Mattel employees. The movie acknowledges that Mattel has come a long way in diversifying Barbie dolls. However, the documentary also points out that there could be more progress in how Mattel’s “Barbie” animated movies still push the idea that the only Barbie who deserves the most attention has to be a white female who is thin, blonde and pretty.
For example, even though the “Barbie” animated movies have introduced a black Barbie named Brooklyn Barbie as a friend counterpart to white Malibu Barbie, the storylines often still presents Brooklyn Barbie as a sidekick, not the main star of the story. Malibu Barbie is still at the center of the marketing campaigns for these movies. If racism is mentioned in the “Barbie” animated movies, Malibu Barbie does most of the talking about it.
Mason Williams—Mattel’s senior director of diversity, equity, and inclusion—is interviewed in the documentary. He looks visibly uncomfortable in the documentary when he’s confronted with criticism that Mattel’s “Barbie” animated movies still don’t show racial equality among the Barbies. Williams gives a tepid response by saying that these changes take time and won’t happen overnight.
One of the best parts of “Black Barbie: A Documentary” is in the last third of the movie, when it goes beyond just talking head interviews and shows a series of focus groups with children (about 7 to 12 years old, male and female and of diverse races) to discuss what they think when they are presented with various Barbie dolls and are asked questions about these dolls. Yeshiva Davis (a therapist whose specialty is family and marriage) is the leader of these focus groups.
The results of these focus groups are revealing about children’s attitudes about race relations and perceptions of physical attractiveness, as well as how these attitudes affect their judgments of others and themselves. The children’s answers are sometimes funny and sometimes sad but always come across as very unfiltered and honest. Davis is then shown discussing the results of these focus groups with various educators and cultural historians, who comment on the children’s answers.
Perhaps that is the greatest takeaway of “Black Barbie: A Documentary”: It’s not about which black Barbie dolls are bestsellers for Mattel. It’s about how Barbie dolls, like them or not, have a great deal of influence on how people (especially impressionable children) can view the world.
Netflix will premiere “Black Barbie: A Documentary” in 2024, on a date to be announced.
RZA (center) and Jon “DJ Skane” Lugo (far right) in “A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre” (Photo courtesy of Wu Tang Productions Inc. and Gee-Bee Productions)
“A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre”
Directed by Gerald Barclay and RZA
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2021, the documentary film “A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre” features a racially diverse group of people (mostly African American and white) who are connected in some way to hip-hip group Wu-Tang Clan’s concert with the Colorado Symphony at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, on August 13, 2021.
Culture Clash: Wu-Tang Clan and the Colorado Symphony defy the expectations of naysayers who think that hip-hop and classical music cannot be a good match.
Culture Audience: “A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Wu-Tang Clan and people who are interested in documentaries about unusual musical pairings.
A scene from “A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre” (Photo courtesy of Wu Tang Productions Inc. and Gee-Bee Productions)
On August 13, 2021, hip-hop supergroup Wu-Tang Clan performed with the 60-piece Colororado Symphony at the iconic Red Rock Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado. “A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre” chronicled this event on stage, backstage, and a few places elsewhere. It’s an entertaining but predictably formatted concert documentary with some film editing that’s a little rough around the edges. If anything, this movie is proof of how hip-hop and classical music can work well together. “A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre” had its world premiere at the 2023 Urbanworld Film Festival.
Directed by RZA (a founding member of Wu-Tang Clan) and Gerald Barclay, “A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre” shows how RZA was the driving force to pair Wu-Tang Clan with a symphony orchestra. RZA, who is also film composer, mentions at one point in the documentary that the inspiration for him to perform on stage with music that wasn’t all hip-hop started in 2016, when he performed the soundtrack to “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin” (a 1978 martial arts film), live at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. That experience led to more opportunities for RZA to show more musical versatility in a live concert setting, he says in the documentary. RZA’s love of martial arts cinema has always been a big influence on Wu-Tang Clan.
“A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre” has plenty of on-stage footage, but the movie includes a great deal off-stage footage, such as exclusive interview clips with RZA and the other members of Wu-Tang Clan: Method Man, Cappadonna, Ghostface Killah, U-God, GZA, Raekwon, Masta Killa and Inspectah Deck. Young Dirty Bastard, son of former Wu-Tang Clan member Ol’ Dirty Bastard (who died of a drug overdose in 2004, at the age of 35), makes a guest appearance during the concert and almost steals the show.
Ever since Wu-Tang Clan burst out of New York City’s Staten Island to become one of the most influential forces in hip-hop—starting with Wu-Tang Clan’s 1993 debut album, “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)”—there has always been intrigue and controversy surrounding the group. All of the members have strong individual personalities (and have solo careers), which has led to periods of infighting and musical hiatuses for Wu-Tang Clan. RZA has branched out to becoming a film director and a comic book entrepreneur.
It’s been several years since the group’s had a new studio album (the most recent album is 2015’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin”), but Wu-Tang Clan still performs semi-regularly. This particular concert documentary shows them in good spirits and expressing overall camraderie. Raekwan comments, “I’m loving the togetherness.”
Masta Killa says of performing with the Colorado Symphony: “Having the orchestra there raises the bar. The goal was to raise it to the highest level possible. Are we there yet? I don’t know. We’ll know if this is a night to remember or a night where RZA just needs to shut the fuck up and stick to hip-hop.”
Method Man, the Wu-Tang Clan member with the most confident swagger on stage and offtsage, is shown in doing some weight lifting in a gym in the beginning of the documentary. He points to the spiderweb tattoos on his biceps, to proudly show how physically fit he is. He gives a lot of credit to RZA for being a visionary for Wu-Tang Clan and says, “We’re blessed that we’re still getting booked … A lot of our peers are dropping like flies.”
In the documentary, RZA reflects on a time when hip-hop wasn’t considered “real music” and has now evolved to be accepted into the mainstream. Case in point: Colorado Symphony resident conductor Christopher Dragon, who conducted the orchestra for this concert, says in the documentary that he grew up listening to Wu-Tang Clan and comes from a generational time period when hip-hop was fully accepted as real music. Dragon shares vivid memories of being 10 or 11 years old and listening to Wu-Tang Clan music that his older sister would play when she would drive them in a car without their parents around. Needless to say, Dragon is an enthusiastic musical partner for this concert.
Other people interviewed or featured in the documentary include Colorado Symphony artistic general manager Izabel Zambrzycki; Colorado Symphony viola player Mary Cowell; Colorado Symphony manager of ortistic Operations Dustin Knock; music producer Oliver “Power” Grant; WuMusic Group general manager Tareef Michael; DJ Mathematics; Jon “DJ Skane” Lugo; Young Dirty Bastard brand/operations manager Divine Everlasting. A diverse assortment of Wu-Tang Clan fans, who are not identifed by their names, are also interviewed at the concert. They say typical fan things, such as how the music affected their lives in positive ways and mention their favorite Wu-Tang Clan songs.
RZA comes across as the deep thinker of the group—someone who would rather show people what he can do, rather than brag about what he can do before it gets done. Although he occasionally says some cliché statements (“Music is a universal language”; “Wu-Tang is for the people”), RZA is the person in the group who makes the most effort to be inspirational in unifying not just the members of the group but also the people in the audience. Toward the end of the concert, RZA leads the audience to put their pands up to form the letter “w,” which not only stands for Wu-Tang Clan but also, as RZA says: “These w’s represent wings. You can fly above anything.”
Red Rocks Amphiteatre is unique and famous for being a venue that exists among natural rock formations that surround the venue. The beauty of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre location is well-showcased in the documentary, which has some stunning drone camera shots, as well as memorable wide-angle shots that allow viewers to soak up the atmosphere of this electrifying concert without actually being there.
The concert features many of Wu-Tang Clan’s best-known songs, including “Protect Ya Neck,” “Can It Be All So Simple,” “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing Ta F’ Wit,” “It’s Yourz,” and “Triumph.” A few solo songs are performed, such as Young Dirty Bastard doing his version of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” and Method Man doing his own solo hit “Bring Da Pain.” In other words, it’s a crowd-pleasing set list.
Will people who don’t like hip-hop enjoy this documentary? It depends on how open-minded viewers are to seeing a documentary that might have music that isn’t necessarily a genre that they listen to on a regular basis. “A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre” does a fairly good job of balancing the on-stage footage with the off-stage footage, but a few of the editing transitions are a bit choppy. Despite these minor flaws, it’s great to see a hip-hop documentary that isn’t a negative stereotype of being about feuding or violence. Wu-Tang Clan has defied a lot of expectations in the group’s long career. This documentary stands as a worthy testament of how taking musical risks can lead to meaningful creative rewards.
Michael J. Fox in “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” (Photo courtesy of Apple TV+)
The following is a press release from the Critics Choice Association:
The Critics Choice Association (CCA) unveiled the winners of the Eighth Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards at a gala event in New York City. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie took home five trophies in all including the top award of the evening for Best Documentary Feature. The film’s other victories were Best Director for Davis Guggenheim, Best Editing for Michael Harte, Best Narration for Michael J. Fox, and Best Biographical Documentary.
The Critics Choice Documentary Awards recognize the year’s finest achievements in documentaries released in theaters, on TV and on major digital platforms, as determined by the voting of qualified CCA members.
20 Days in Mariupol, American Symphony, and The Deepest Breath each took home two awards.
20 Days in Mariupol won the awards for Best First Documentary for director Mstyslav Chernov, and Best Political Documentary.
Jon Batiste won Best Score for his work on American Symphony and the film also took home the award for Best Music Documentary.
The Deepest Breath was another of the evening’s double award-winners, with wins for Tim Cragg in Best Cinematography and Best Sports Documentary.
The trophy for Best Archival Documentary was awarded to Being Mary Tyler Moore.
Best Historical Documentary went to JFK: One Day in America.
The award for Best Science/Nature Documentary was presented to Secrets of the Elephants.
In the True Crime Documentary category, there was a tie between Lennon: Murder Without a Trial and Telemarketers.
The Last Repair Shop won the award for Best Short Documentary.
Best Limited Documentary Series went to The 1619 Project.
30 for 30 took home the award for Best Ongoing Documentary Series.
At the ceremony, the Pennebaker Award was presented to acclaimed documentarian Ross McElwee. The award, formerly known as the Critics Choice Lifetime Achievement Award, is named in honor of D A Pennebaker, a past winner. It was presented to Kopple by Chris Hegedus, Pennebaker’s long-time collaborator and widow.
For the fourth year in a row, the Critics Choice Documentary Awards welcomed National Geographic Documentary Films as the Presenting Sponsor.
TheCatalyst Sponsors for the Eighth Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards were Amazon MGM Studiosand Netflix.
The Spirits Sponsor of the event was Milagro Tequila.
To stream the ceremony, learn more about the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, and see the full list of nominees and winners, visit the Critics Choice Association website.
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Winners of the Eighth Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards
*=winner
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
20 Days in Mariupol (PBS) American Symphony (Netflix) Beyond Utopia (Roadside Attractions) The Deepest Breath (Netflix) The Eternal Memory (MTV Documentary Films/Paramount+) Judy Blume Forever (Amazon Studios) Kokomo City (Magnolia Pictures) The Mission (National Geographic) Stamped from the Beginning (Netflix) Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (Apple TV+)*
BEST DIRECTOR
Maite Alberdi – The Eternal Memory (MTV Documentary Films/Paramount+) Madeleine Gavin – Beyond Utopia (Roadside Attractions) Davis Guggenheim – Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (Apple TV+)* Matthew Heineman – American Symphony (Netflix) Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss – The Mission (National Geographic) Steve McQueen – Occupied City (A24)
BEST FIRST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
20 Days in Mariupol (PBS)* 26.2 to Life (Film Halau) Bad Press (Oklafilm) Bobi Wine: The People’s President (National Geographic) Kokomo City (Magnolia Pictures) Orlando, My Political Biography (Sideshow) Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Greenwich Entertainment) The Thief Collector (FilmRise)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Tim Cragg – The Deepest Breath (Netflix)* Tony Hardmon, Matthew Heineman, Thorsten Thielow – American Symphony (Netflix) Lennert Hillege – Occupied City (A24) Franz Lustig – Anselm (Sideshow) D. Smith – Kokomo City (Magnolia Pictures) Toby Strong, James Boon, Bob Poole, Neil Fairlie, Wim Vorster, Joshua Tarr, Pete Allibone, Neil Harvey, Andreas Knausenberger – Secrets of the Elephants (National Geographic)
BEST EDITING
Sammy Dane, Jim Hession, Matthew Heineman, Fernando Villegas – American Symphony (Netflix) Madeleine Gavin – Beyond Utopia (Roadside Attractions) Michael Harte – Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (Apple TV+)* Michelle Mizner – 20 Days in Mariupol (PBS) D. Smith – Kokomo City (Magnolia Pictures) Aaron Wickenden – The Mission (National Geographic)
BEST SCORE
Jon Batiste – American Symphony (Netflix)* Danny Bensi & Saunder Jurriaans – The Mission (National Geographic) Nainita Desai – The Deepest Breath (Netflix) Philip Glass & Paul Leonard-Morgan – The Pigeon Tunnel (Apple TV+) Katya Richardson & Kris Bowers – The Last Repair Shop (Breakwater Studios) D. Smith – Kokomo City (Magnolia Pictures)
BEST NARRATION
20 Days in Mariupol (PBS) Written and Performed by Mstyslav Chernov
32 Sounds (Abramorama) Written and Performed by Sam Green
The Disappearance of Shere Hite (IFC Films) Written by Nicole Newnham, Eileen Meyer and Shere Hite Performed by Dakota Johnson
John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial (Apple TV+) Performed by Kiefer Sutherland
Secrets of the Elephants (National Geographic) Written by Martin Williams, Caroline Hawkins and Jonathan Frisby Performed by Natalie Portman
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (Apple TV+)* Written and Performed by Michael J. Fox
BEST ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTARY
Being Mary Tyler Moore (HBO | Max)* The Disappearance of Shere Hite (IFC Films) It Ain’t Over (Sony Pictures Classics) JFK: One Day in America (National Geographic) The Lady Bird Diaries (Hulu/ABC News Studios) The League (Magnolia Pictures)
BEST HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARY
The 1619 Project (Hulu/Onyx Collective) JFK: One Day in America (National Geographic)* The Lady Bird Diaries (Hulu/ABC News Studios) Lakota Nation vs. United States (IFC Films) The League (Magnolia Pictures) Occupied City (A24) Stamped from the Beginning (Netflix)
BEST BIOGRAPHICAL DOCUMENTARY
Being Mary Tyler Moore (HBO | Max) The Disappearance of Shere Hite (IFC Films) Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project (HBO Documentary Films) Judy Blume Forever (Amazon Studios) Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields (Hulu/ABC News Studios) Sly (Netflix) Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (Apple TV+)*
BEST MUSIC DOCUMENTARY
American Symphony (Netflix)* Carlos (Sony Pictures Classics) Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop (Netflix) Little Richard: I Am Everything (Magnolia Pictures/CNN Films) Love to Love You, Donna Summer (HBO | Max) Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (AMC Theatres) What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? (Abramorama)
BEST POLITICAL DOCUMENTARY
20 Days in Mariupol (PBS)* Beyond Utopia (Roadside Attractions) Bobi Wine: The People’s President (National Geographic) Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court (Showtime) Every Body (Focus Features) Lakota Nation vs. United States (IFC Films) Silver Dollar Road (Amazon MGM Studios)
BEST SCIENCE/NATURE DOCUMENTARY
32 Sounds (Abramorama) Between Earth & Sky (PBS) Life on Our Planet (Netflix) Path of the Panther (National Geographic) Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food (Netflix) Secrets of the Elephants (National Geographic)* Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West (Gravitas Ventures)
BEST SPORTS DOCUMENTARY
Black Ice (Roadside Attractions) BS High (HBO | Max) The Deepest Breath (Netflix)* It Ain’t Over (Sony Pictures Classics) The League (Magnolia Pictures) Reggie (Amazon Studios) Stephen Curry: Underrated (Apple TV+) Welcome to Wrexham (FX)
BEST TRUE CRIME DOCUMENTARY
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About the Critics Choice Awards
The Critics Choice Documentary Awards are an offshoot of the Critics Choice Awards, which are bestowed annually by the CCA to honor the finest in cinematic and television achievement. Historically, the Critics Choice Awards are the most accurate predictor of Academy Award nominations.
The Critics Choice Awards ceremony will be held on January 14, 2024 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Century City, CA, and will be broadcast live on The CW.
About the Critics Choice Association (CCA)
The Critics Choice Association is the largest critics organization in the United States and Canada, representing more than 580 media critics and entertainment journalists. It was established in 2019 with the formal merger of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association, in recognition of the intersection between film, television, and streaming content. For more information, visit: www.CriticsChoice.com.
To learn more about the Critics Choice Documentary Awards and see the full list of nominees, visit the Critics Choice Association website.
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2022, this documentary film of jazz/pop musician Jon Batiste features him, his wife Suleika Jaouad, and a racially diverse group of people (African American, white and a few Asians) as he prepares to do a one-night-only “American Symphony” show at New York City’s Carnegie Hall while experiencing difficulties in his personal life.
Culture Clash: At the time that Batiste was experiencing some career highs (including winning five Grammys that year), Jaouad was battling cancer, which came back after years of being in remission.
Culture Audience: “American Symphony” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Batiste and movies about couples or family members dealing with health challenges.
Suleika Jaouad and Jon Baptiste in “American Symphony” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
“American Symphony” is a documentary about love on many different levels in telling the story of musician Jon Batiste and his writer wife Suleika Jaouad during her cancer journey. There are no real surprises but the movie is a bittersweet celebration of life. “American Symphony” is also a musical treat for people who appreciate Batiste’s unique artistry. He also composed the score for this documentary. “American Symphony” had its world premiere at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival.
Directed by Matthew Heineman, “American Symphony” (which was filmed in 2022) features voiceover narration from Batiste and Jaouad, indicating that this is as much a documentary about her as it is about him. Batiste just happens to be more famous than his wife, but it’s clear from watching the film that they treat each other as respected equals. Batiste and Jaouad have been a couple since 2014. Their 2022 wedding ceremony is shown in “American Symphony.”
In 2011, Jaouad was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and chronicled her cancer journey in The New York Times column/vlog “Life, Interrupted,” which won an Emmy Award. Batiste is an Oscar-winning composer (for Disney/Pixar’s “Soul”) and was the bad leader/music director for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” from 2015 to 2022. In 2022, he was nominated for 11 Grammys and won five Grammys, including Album of the Year for “We Are.” That same year, he also did a one-night-only show “American Symphony” concert at Carnegie Hall, with the show featuring his original music that reworks classical and jazz.
The documentary shows that at the same time Batiste is experiencing these career highs, Jaouad’s cancer has returned. The day that Batiste found out that he was nominated for 11 Grammys was the same day that Jaouad had to begin chemotherapy. Later, she had to get a bone marrow transplant. “American Symphony” shows how Batiste and Jaouad experience emotional lows that are raw and intense. However, the documentary is a testament to inner strength and the power of a loving support system.
“American Symphony” is also Batiste’s personal reflection of what music has meant to him in his life and how he had to stay true to himself, when other people were telling him to change so he could “fit in” better at the places where he wanted to be. Born in 1986 and raised in the New Orleans area, Batista goes back to his alma mater of Juilliard, which he describes as very “European classical,” not a “black Southern thing.”
The bond that this loving couple has is joyful to behold. Batiste says of Jaouad: “I learn from her all the time to look into the darkness and despair and to face it—but you can’t let it consume you.” Jaouad comments that what she admires Batiste’s ability to deal with life’s extremes: “I actually don’t know how to hold such extremes.”
“American Symphony” juxtaposes dreamy-like scenes of Batiste relaxing in nature (there are multiple shots of him in ocean water) with the stark and harsh realities of hospital visits with Jaouad. Batiste’s “American Symphony” concert is a rousing and emotionally moving conclusion that expresses many of the emotions that he poured into writing this symphony. People who watch this memorable documentary will appreciate its message that life is a symphony whose music and lyrics are still being written.
Netflix will release “American Symphony” in select U.S. cinemas on November 24, 2023. Netflix will premiere the movie on November 29, 2023.
Culture Representation: This biographical documentary film of activist/poet Nikki Giovanni features her first-person perspective, as well as commentary from African Americans and white people who are connected to her in some way.
Culture Clash: Giovanni, an outspoken critic of white supremacist racism, discusses overcoming an abusive background, family conflicts and resistance to her activism.
Culture Audience: “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching documentaries about unusual political activists.
Nikki Giovanni in “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” (Photo courtesy of HBO)
“Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” is a journey into a unique life and perspective that might not be for everyone, but it stands firm in its authenticity. This documentary about poet/activist Nikki Giovanni is bold and somewhat unconventional, just like Giovanni. The movie evokes outer space travel as an apt metaphor for how ideas and influences can transcend boundaries.
Directed by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary. The movie is told almost entirely from the perspective of Giovanni, with narration of some of her poems by actress Taraji P. Henson. The movie has the expected mix of archival footage and interviews conducted exclusively for the documnetary. However, “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” has added elements of atmospheric scenes of outer space, since Giovanni talks a lot about space travel and Mars.
The movie opens with a quote from Giovanni, “The trip to Mars can only be understood through black Americans.” If that sentence intrigues you, then this documentary might be your type of movie. Giovanni says in the documentary’s opening remark: “I don’t remember a lot of things, but a lot of things I don’t remember, I don’t choose to remember. I remember what’s important, and I make up the rest. That’s what storytelling is all about.”
In voiceover narration, Henson can be heard saying a line from Giovanni’s writing: “I think I’ll run away with the ants and live on Mars.” In another voiceover, Giovanni says: “I’m a big fan of black women, because in our blood is space travel, because we come from a known through an unknown. And that’s all that space travel is. If anybody can find what’s out there in the darkness, it’s black women.”
During a public Q&A with journalist/writer Touré, to promote her 2017 non-fiction book “A Good Cry: What We Learn From Tears and Laughter,” Giovanni comments on the enslaved black female slaves who were kidnapped in Africa and forced to live an enslaved life in the United States, where they were often raped by their white enslavers: “Being forced to have sex with aliens, whatever they put in us, we held it, and then we birthed it, and then we named it, and then we loved it. Why wouldn’t we do that on Mars?”
Giovanni was born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni on June 7, 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee, but spent much of her childhood living in Ohio. Sometime in her childhood, she was given the nickname Nikki. Her parents Yolande Cornelia Sr. and Jones “Gus” Giovanni (who were sweethearts at Knoxville College) worked in public schools. Nikki graduated from Fisk University in Nashville in 1967. She has been a professor of writing and literature at Virginia Tech since 1987.
Nikki first came to national prominence as part of the Black Power movement that rose in the late 1960s. The documentary includes many archival clips of her appearances on TV shows, including “Soul!,” where she was a frequent guest. “Going to Mars” has has footage of several of Nikki’s speaking appearances, including at the 2016 Afropunk festival.
She also gets candid about her parents’ volatile marriage and says that her father often beat up her mother. Nikki says in a voiceover: “It was a stormy relationship at various points, but we know that deprivation gives us stormy relationships.” Later, she is shown saying during a WHYY radio interview about how she felt about her abusive father at the time she lived with him: “It was clear I was going to have to kill him, or else I’d have to move.”
Nikki’s complicated emotions about race and gender includes admitting to her prejudices. In a “Soul!” interview she did in 1971 with writer/poet James Baldwin, when she was at the height of her Black Power fame, she confessed that her biases were affecting her personal life: “I don’t like white people, and I’m afraid of black men. What do you do? That’s a cycle. And that’s unfortunate, because I need love.”
Nikki found love with her wife Virginia Fowler, who recruited Nikki to work at Virginia Tech. The two women are both cancer survivors: Nikki battled lung cancer in the 1990s. Fowler is recovering from lung cancer and breast cancer. Fowler talks a little bit about her cancer journey, but Nikki doesn’t really discuss her own cancer experiences in the documentary.
Nikki’s selective memory is also shown when someone named Tom calls her to ask Nikki to discuss her time at an unnamed magazine, but she declines to be interviewed. Nikki says it’s because she had a seizure and “doesn’t remember much.” She also chooses not to go into details about the relationship that resulted in the birth of her only child Thomas Govanni, who was born in 1969, and she raised him as a single mother.
Nikki doesn’t talk about the turbulent relationship that she’s had with Thomas, but Fowler comments that Nikki and Thomas were estranged for a number of years and have since reconciled. Thomas and his daughter Kai Giovanni appear briefly in the documentary, which shows Kai going to Nikki’s house for the first time.
Perhaps the biggest drawback of this documentary is that the most candid comments from Nikki are not things she said in exclusive interviews for the documentary but things she talked about in archival clips. Much credit should be given to the documentary’s research and editing teams for including a lot of this rarely seen footage. The documentary’s editing artfully weaves outer-space footage with the rest of the footage so that viewers feel like they are taken on a cosmic journey through Nikki’s life.
Most of the documentary’s original footage of Nikki consists of her at her home (such as a scene of her doing some gardening), hanging out with friends such as performer Novella Nelson, or making public speaking appearances. The most vulnerable that Nikki gets in the documentary is toward the end, when she copes with the grief over the death of her beloved aunt Agnes, who passed away at age 94. The documentary shows Nikki getting the news of the death and later speaking at Agnes’ funeral. Nikki comments during a moment that she is now the oldest living person in her family.
Nikki’s outlook on life can be summed up in two of her speaking appearances that are featured in the documentary. In a Q&A at the Apollo Theater with educator/actress Johnetta Cole, Nikki says: “I honestly think the most important word for me is ‘duty.’ … Our people have a great history, and it’s our duty to tell that story.” At another speaking appearance at a library in front of children, Nikki (who has written several children’s books) says: “I’m very fortunate that I just don’t care what people think about me.”
HBO released “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” in select U.S. cinemas on November 3, 2023. HBO and Max will premiere the movie on January 8, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place from August 7 to August 9, 2023, at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, the concert documentary film “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” features a predominantly white group of people (with some black people, Latinos and Asians) who are concert performers or audience members at a Taylor Swift concert.
Culture Clash: Music superstar Taylor Swift gives her last 2023 U.S. concert on her 2023-2024 “The Eras Tour,” where she performs songs from every era of her career so far, including songs about her relationship breakups and personal problems.
Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of Taylor Swift fans, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” will appeal primarily to people who enjoy watching high-energy and stylish pop concerts.
Taylor Swift in “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” (Photo courtesy of AMC Theatres Distribution)
“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” shows an artist in full command of her craft and stage presence. Even if you don’t particularly care for Taylor Swift’s music, this concert documentary radiates positive energy. However, the on-stage talk seems too rehearsed. Swift is known for reinventing herself through her music (she has done albums of country music, pop music and folk music), but she has maintained a public persona that’s a mixture being of confident celebrity and being a relatable “regular person” who confesses her insecurities and failings in her songs.
Directed by Sam Wrench, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is a documentary showing highlights from concerts that Swift performed on her mega-successful The Eras Tour. The concerts took place at the SoFi Stadum in Inglewood, California, from August 7 to August 9, 2023. There is no backstage or off-stage footage, until the end credits, when there are clips of her rehearsing and footage of fans in the parking lots of her concerts. Except for the end credits, which has “Long Live (Taylor’s Version)” as the song playing in the background, this is a concert film from start to finish.
Wrench has directed several other concert documentaries, including 2022’s “BTS: Permission to Dance on Stage – LA,” “Lizzo: Live in Concert” and 2023’s “Billie Eilish: Live at the O2” and “Brandi Carlile: In the Canyon Haze – Live from Laurel Canyon.” His experience with concert documentaries is very apparent in this slickly helmed film that has plenty of close-ups of Swift smirking and preening for the cameras like a diva in total control of her audience and very aware of where each camera is on stage. She plays acoustic guitar on many of the songs and occasionally plays piano.
The movie opens with giant billowing orange-red fabric engulfing the stage and looking like giant flower petals before Swift emerges like a sparkly butterfly in her sequin-filled leotard and Christian Louboutin boots. The part of the stage that extends to the audience is shaped like an electric guitar. During this 168-minute movie, Swift performs hits from every album she recorded up until The Eras tour: From her self-titled 2006 debut album (released when she was 16 years old) to her 2022 “Midnights” album. Each era is named after one of her albums. On stage, she’s flanked by a small army of musicians and diverse backup dancers.
There are expected numerous wardrobe changes for Swift during the show—her outfits are either close-fitting, sparkly pop star gear or romantic-looking frilly dresses—from designers such as Robert Cavalli, Alberta Ferretti and Atelier Versace. She also gives the predictable declarations of gratitude to the fans for all of their support. The song-and-dance numbers are well-choreographed and enjoyable to watch. However, even though Swift has won numerous awards in her life, she’s never going to win any awards for Dancer of the Year.
Early on in the concert, Swift points an index finger at the audience and swerves around the stage to get people to scream wherever she’s pointing. She then flexes up one of her arm muscles and coos to the stadium full of adoring fans: “You just made me feel so powerful. I guess I’m trying to say, ‘You’re making me feel like the man.'” And (you guessed it), she then performs her hit “The Man.”
For someone who is famous for pouring her personal life into her songs, Swift doesn’t get too personal when she talks to the audience in between songs. During this concert, the most that she will mention about her personal thoughts is saying when she wrote her Grammy-winning 2020 “Folklore” album, she decided to make it a concept album of a fantasy world of imaginary Victorian-era characters, in order to forget that she was a “lonely millennial covered in cat hair” (she famously has cats as pets) and “watching 700 hours of TV.”
But it seems somewhat misleading for Swift to describe herself as a lovelorn bachelorette when she wrote “Folklore.” At the time, she was in a committed relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn, who co-wrote and co-produced several of the album’s songs under the pseudonym William Bowery. Swift and Alwyn began dating in 2016, and they split up in early 2023.
You’d have to be completely cut off from pop culture not to have heard at least one of Swift’s catchy songs. It’s why people who don’t really like Swift’s music have to admit that she has a knack for writing songs that stick in people’s heads. This concert flm is also a good overview of how she’s evolved from a teenage country singer writing songs about high school romance (“You Belong With Me”) to an adult pop star cursing when expressing dark and angry thoughts (“Vigilante Shit”). A high point of the concert is a very rousing rendition of “Bad Blood” that will get most viewers, at the bare minimum, moving their heads or feet in time to the music.
The concert has some visual effects that look very impressive in a movie. Before the “Reputation” Era part of the concert begins, a giant snake hologram appears to take over the stage. Before the “Midnights” Era part of the concert begins, Swift jumps into a chasm on the stage, with the visual effects making it look like she’s swimming in a pool underneath the stage. The stage design includes some stylish props, including a moss-covered piano for her “Evermore” Era songs. For “Look What You Made Me Do,” her backup dancers are in plexiglass cages that are meant to make them look like toy dolls in boxes.
“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” breaks tradition with most concert documentaries released in cinemas because it’s distributed by AMC Theatres Distribution (owned by cinema company AMC Entertainment) instead of a movie studio or a special-events movie company such as Fathom Events or Trafalgar Releasing. AMC worked with sub-distribution partners to bring the movie to its rival cinema companies, such as Regal and Cinemark. In Europe, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is at Odeon Cinemas. Pre-sales have guaranteed that “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” movie is a blockbuster hit.
What does this mean for the future of concert documentaries? Movie theater companies can now bypass movie studios by distributing movies themselves and thereby not have to share the ticket revenue with movie studios. Likewise, artists can keep their rights to their concert films, instead of selling the rights to a movie studio that can distribute these films. Swift’s trailblazing success with “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” will ensure that other artists will follow the same business model. “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” (a concert documentary from Beyoncé’s 2023 “Renaissance” tour) is already set for release through a similar deal with AMC, on December 1, 2023.
“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is pure escapism, full of glitz and glamour. Don’t expect to hear any sob stories or political rants from Swift on stage, because that’s not what her fans want when they see her in concert. On the other hand, everything she says and does on stage looks so calculated, there aren’t any moments that truly look spontaneous. Swift also mentions the words “SoFi Stadium” so many times during the show, you have to wonder if she got paid extra money for this brand promotion.
Even when Swift goes to the front of the stage to embrace a girl (who’s about 5 or 6 years old) in the audience, it looks like this girl was chosen well in advance. (And based on her front row seat, whoever brought this girl to the concert paid enough money to ensure this kid would be seen by Swift on stage.) It would’ve been more admirable if Swift did something like that for a fan who didn’t have such privileged seating.
Swift shows a little too much neediness for the audience to adore her while not particularly opening up to the audience on a personal level in return. It’s the type of concert where she could say the exact same things but just change the name of the location to wherever she happens to be doing the concert. That’s a “cut and paste” style to performing live—not making each concert audience feel truly unique.
“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is enjoyable to watch but it will not go down in history as one of the all-time greatest concert films. The best concert films (such as 1970’s “Woodstock,” 1978’s “The Last Waltz” or 2021’s “Summer of Soul”) are transformative experiences that go beyond what a well-oiled machine looks like. “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is a well-oiled machine that gets the job done in delivering entertaining and mostly uplifting hits but doesn’t give any further insight into the artist’s soul.
Here is the song list for “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour”:
“Lover” Era “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” (intro) “Cruel Summer” “The Man” “You Need to Calm Down” “Lover”
“Fearless” Era “Fearless” “You Belong With Me” “Love Story”
“Evermore” Era “Willow” “Marjorie” “Champagne Problems” “Tolerate It”
“Reputation” Era “…Ready for It?” “Delicate” “Don’t Blame Me” “Look What You Made Me Do”
“Speak Now” Era “Enchanted”
“Red” Era “22” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” “I Knew You Were Trouble”
“Folklore” Era “The 1” “Betty” “The Last Great American Dynasty” “August” “Illicit Affairs” “My Tears Ricochet”
“1989” Era “Style” “Blank Space” “Shake It Off” “Bad Blood”
AMC Theatres Distribution released “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” on October 13, 2023. An extended version of the movie will be released on digital and VOD on December 13, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Ukraine and in Poland in early 2022, the documentary film “In the Rearview” features a nearly all-white group of people (with one black person) who were affected by the Russian invasion war of Ukraine.
Culture Clash: “In the Rearview” director Maciek Hamela, who is from Poland, documented the van rides that he gave to refugees escaping from Ukraine to Poland.
Culture Audience: “In the Rearview” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in watching a documentary about what it was like to evacuate from Ukraine during the Russian invasion that began in 2022.
A scene from “In the Rearview” (Photo courtesy of Affinity Cine and SaNoSi Productions)
The compelling documentary “In the Rearview” offers a glimpse into what some Ukrainian refugees were experiencing during the Russian invasion in 2022, while riding in a rescue van crossing the border into Poland. The film is intimate and sometimes very raw. It’s filmed in cinéma vérité style, in every sense of the word: There are no interviews, no re-enactments and no follow-ups to see what happened to the people in the documentary. “In the Rearview” had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“In the Rearview” is the feature-film directorial debut of Maciek Hamela, a Polish citizen who volunteered to drive a van of Ukrainian refugees from Ukraine to Poland when the Russian invasion began in February 2022. About a month after Hamela began doing these rescue missions, he started filming these trips at the end of March 2022. Most of the documentary’s footage shows the passengers inside the van, with the camera facing the passengers. Hamela has said in interviews that all filming was done by human camera operators—not a fixed or hidden camera on a dashboard (also known as a dash cam)—so that the participants knew that they were being filmed at the time.
There are several documentaries that chronicle the horrors of war. In the case of the Russian-Ukrainian war, documentaries about this war tend to focus on the people who are stuck or left behind in the war zone, or the documentaries have discussions of the politics that led to this war. “In the Rearview” has a unique perspective, because it’s about the transition period when war refugees know that they are leaving for a safer place, but there’s still a lot of anxiety and fear of what’s ahead.
It goes without saying that the refugees have had to leave almost all of their possessions behind in their abandoned homes. What causes much more agony is that many of the refugees have been involuntarily separated from loved ones or know that their loved ones have died. The people who have been separated from their loved ones often don’t know where their loved ones are. And if they do know where their loved ones are, communication sometimes isn’t possible for long stretches of time, because the war-torn areas often have no electricity or Internet service. Adding to the pain is the fact that some of the refugees need medical help that they won’t be able to get until they’re safely out of Ukraine.
All of these issues weigh heavily on the refugee passengers who are featured in the documentary. They are not identified by name while they are shown in the van. However, the names of the participants are listed in the end credits of “In the Rearview.” Hamela can be heard and briefly seen during these trips, as he has conversations with the people who are temporarily in his care during this terrible time in the refugees’ lives. Unlike some documentarians, Hamela doesn’t want to make himself the center of the attention during filming. He comes across as compassionate, humble and someone who deeply cares about the safety of these refugees.
Many of the passengers who are in the documentary are groups of families. A few of the refugees are traveling alone. Many are deep in thought and don’t say anything. They look like they’re too much in shock to speak. Some of the refugees are talkative, as if they want to unload some of the burdens they’re feeling.
People of many different generations are featured. The children under the age of 8 are often too young to fully understand what’s happening, but they know something is very wrong. In one of the documentary’s segments, a family with three generations of people, including two married grandparents, are in the van. The grandmother says, “We only left because of the kids.” She later gets teary-eyed when she talks about the family’s 9-year-old cow named Beauty that the family had to leave behind.
Another family has brought the family’s 5-month-old cat (a male with black and white fur), and is shown keeping the cat safe by having it tucked into a basket during the evacuation. The wife in the family says she no longer dreams when she sleeps. She says it’s because at night, she is constantly hearing explosions.
During another ride, a woman in her late 20s or early 30s is a pregnant surrogate, who wonders aloud what will happen after she gives birth. The woman who was supposed to raise this unborn child is apparently missing and is possibly dead. The pregnant surrogate, who is accompanied by her own mother during this van ride, seems to want to take her mind off of this dire situation by talking about her goal to one day open a bakery/sweets shop where people can test the pastries before eating.
The hellish experiences of the war are discussed in a few of the conversations. A girl who’s about 13 or 14 years old talks about witnessing a rape that happened as a direct result of the war. During another van ride, a woman in her 30s talks about how her father’s fingers had to be amputated because of injuries he got while trying to rescue her mother.
In a family of five people, identified in the end credits as having the surname Lichko, the family’s stressed-out patriarch Kirill Lichko describes how his house was bombed while his family members were inside. “I don’t know how they survived,” he says of his family members, with a mixture of relief and apprehension. Kirill has a 5-year-old daughter named Sofia Lichko, who is intelligent and polite. The members of this family were able to escape with their identification, so Sofia demonstrates how she was taught to show her ID form if she’s asked to show her ID.
The van is also a makeshift ambulance that doesn’t have medical supplies but is able to accommodate people who are not able to sit up. One of the more memorable refugees in the documentary is an injured college student, who is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is traveling alone and has injuries that require medical attention, so she is seen lying down in pain as she tells her story.
The Congolese immigrant says she came to Ukraine to study the oil industry and has been living in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv for the past 10 years. She has a sister who lives in Ternopil, Ukraine, because her sister came to Ukraine to study economics. This Congolese immigrant says the oil industry doesn’t interest her.
She also mentions that during her time in Ukraine, she opened a shop that sold African imports, but the business failed. Despite all of the uncertainty over her future, she is certain that she will come back to live in Ukraine, which she says is like a second homeland for her. She says she will return to Ukraine “when things calm down.”
These rescue trips across the border are also fraught with tension when the van is stopped by soldiers at the border. The documentary doesn’t show anyone being turned away, but you get the feeling that Hamela would’ve just found another way to get the refugees across the border. The evacuations filmed in this documentary happened early enough in the war for the refugees to be let across the border much easier than if they tried to evacuate when things got worse during the war.
“In the Rearview” is very much a no-frills “snapshot” documentary, where viewers are just given glimspses into the lives of the people who are featured. There are a few questions that remain unanswered, such as: “How did Hamela deal with a shortage of gas fuel in the Ukraine?” “Where did he drop off people who had nowhere to go?” “How far was he willing to go to drive people to help them find their missing loved ones?” Although “In the Rearview” does not answer these questions, viewers will have a clear sense of the vulnerable emotions of these refugees who were filmed during a very tumultuous and dangerous time in their lives.
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Donyale Luna: Supermodel” features a group of white and black people (with one Latino) discussing the life and career of model Donyale Luna, who broke barriers for black female models in the fashion industry.
Culture Clash: After being bullied through her teenage years in her hometown of Detroit, because of her unusual physical appearance, Luna reinvented herself and quickly became an international supermodel, but she experienced career-damaging racism and had ongoing personal problems, such drug abuse, mental health issues, and a career that burned out almost as quickly as it lit up.
Culture Audience: “Donyale Luna: Supermodel” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in biographies of unusual and underrated celebrities; the fashion industry in the mid-1960s to mid-1970s; and people who broke racial barriers in their industries.
Donyale Luna in “Donyale Luna: Supermodel” (Photo by Luigi Cazzaniga/HBO)
When people think of the first black woman to be on the cover of Vogue, they might think that supermodel Beverly Johnson holds that distinction. Johnson was actually the first black woman to be on the cover of American Vogue, in 1974. The first black woman to be on the cover of any Vogue was Donyale Luna, who achieved this milestone by gracing the cover of British Vogue, in 1966. Luna (whose first name was pronounced “dawn-yell”) was also the first black woman to be on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, in 1965, but as an illustration, not in a photograph.
If you’ve never heard of Luna, you’re not alone. The documentary “Donyale Luna: Supermodel” shines a deserving spotlight on this often-overlooked model, who died of a heroin overdose in 1979, at the age of 33. Johnson, whose modeling career benefited from Luna’s racial breakthroughs, is interviewed in the documentary. Johnson admits that early on in Johnson’s career, she had never heard of Luna.
Directed by Nailah Jefferson, “Donyale Luna: Supermodel” (which had its world premiere at the 2023 American Black Film Festival) follows a traditional celebrity documentary format of having a mixture of archival footage and interviews that are exclusive to the documentary. However, Luna is such an unusual subject, and there’s such a great variety of people who are interviewed, the movie doesn’t ever feel too formulaic. It’s a riveting and well-rounded biography about a trailblazing model who never became a household name but whose impact and influence resonate for generations after her untimely passing. This documentary also explores generational trauma and pop culture.
“Donyale Luna” is artfully told in five chapters named after the cities that each defined a certain era in Luna’s life. Chapter One begins in Detroit, followed by Chapter Two in New York City, Chapter Three in London, Chapter Four in Paris, and Chapter Five in Rome. Detroit is where Peggy Ann Freeman (Luna’s real name) was born in August 31, 1945, as the middle of three sisters. She lived in Detroit through her teenage years. Her favorite movie was “West Side Sory.” Much of her childhood was scarred by bullying that she got from her some of peers because she was very tall (reportedly growing to 6’2″), slender and had big eyes. She was often called “ugly” by people who thought she didn’t fit their standard of beauty.
Adding to her unhappiness, her strict parents had a volatile on-again/off-again marriage that ended in a tragedy that won’t be described in this review, so as not reveal too much information that’s in the documentary. There’s a lot about Luna in the documentary that viewers will be finding out for the first time. There are some people interviewed in the documentary who break down in tears when talking about her, so viewers should not be surprised if they get emotional too when they watch this documentary.
Several of Luna’s family members are interviewed, including Luna’s younger sister, Lillian Washington, who says that her parents had a “history of domestic violence.” Her father Nathaniel Freeman (a longtime Ford Motor Company employee) physically abused their mother Peggy Freeman (a longtime YWCA employee), according Luna’s Detroit childhood friend Omar K. Boone, who’s interviewed in the documentary. Boone also says that when he knew Luna in her teen years, she was “unsophisticated” but a “quick learner.”
Washington and many others in “Donyale Luna: Supermodel” describe Luna as having an other-worldly beauty that would make people stop what they were doing and stare at her if she was in their presence. People who knew her best also describe her inner beauty of radiating kindness and love. However, Luna also had lifelong insecurities about the way she looked and about being accepted by other people. Several people in the documentary say that Luna habitually made up stories about herself and sought to escape in fantasy worlds that she fabricated.
The combination of these insecurities and the bullying she got as a child led her to invent the Donyale Luna persona for herself when she was a teenager. She started speaking in a European accent and pretended to be multiracial, even though she and her parents were African American. The documentary’s archival footage of her from the late 1960s shows that Luna wore piercing blue contact lenses that didn’t look like human eyes. It’s mentioned that Luna’s father disapproved of this invented persona because he felt that she was denying her African American heritage.
Washington says of Luna’s childhood and teenage years: “All the black guys thought she was crazy. They called her ‘skinny’ and ‘bony.’ They called her Olive Oyl. They hurt her to her core. I think that encouraged her to create her own persona.” Josephine Armstrong, Luna’s older sister, confirms about Luna: “She would pretend and tell stories.”
Luna’s life would change when she was discovered in Detroit by photographer David McCabe, who urged her to go to New York City (where he was based) to become a fashion model. McCabe, who is one of the people interviewed in the documentary, believes that Luna lied about her racial identity (at various times, she claimed that she was part-white, part-Latino, part Asian and/or part-Native American) because she probably felt that if people knew she was fully African American, she would experience more racism. It’s also mentioned in the documentary that Luna often talked about wishing that she had blonde hair and blue eyes.
Armed with her invented persona, Luna took McCabe’s advice and moved to New York City, in 1964. Within a few months of living in New York City, Luna was featured in the pages of major fashion magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar. She also began hobnobbing with artsy and avant-garde types. For example, McCabe says that he introduced Luna to Andy Warhol. Luna is described as someone who kept in touch with family members but also publicly denied or lied about many things about her family. The documentary mentions that she showed no interest in going back to the United States to visit her biological family after she moved to Europe.
Luna soon branched out into acting in some films, mostly supporting roles in middling movies, such as 1966’s “Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?” and 1969’s “Fellini Satyricon.” Her filmography as an actress was not extensive. According to the Internet Movie Database, Luna had credited roles as an actress in only five feature films from 1965 to 1972, with 1972’s “Salome” being the only movie where she had a starring role. She appeared as herself in several other movies.
Although she was in the public eye, Luna kept many things about herself very private and was able to fool a lot of people with her lies about her background. “Donyale Luna: Supermodel” does not mention that while she was living in New York in the mid-1960s, she was married for less than a year to an unknown actor. Very little is known about this 10-month marriage except that it ended in divorce, and Luna refused to publicly talk about this ex-husband. It says a lot about the times that she lived in, long before the Internet existed, that she was able to keep up her charade of pretending to be an exotic, multiracial European and hide many facts about her personal life.
One of her closest friends during this time was David Croland, an artist who freely admits that heavy drug use was part of their friendship and lifestyles. In the documentary, Croland says that he and Luna would regularly use marijuana, hashish and LSD. Other people in the documentary also talk about Luna’s drug abuse, which they believe was part of her need to mentally escape from her problems and try to avoid her insecurities. Family members and friends say that Luna often used drugs but was never addicted. However, it’s hard to know if that’s true, or if it’s denial from loved ones who don’t want to publicly admit that Luna could have been a drug addict.
Even with her very quick success in the fashion industry, Luna still experienced many racial barriers as a black model in the mid-1960s. It was one thing to be in some fashion spreads. It was another thing to get on the cover of major magazines or get lucrative endorsement deals, which at the time were still privileges given only to white models. The documentary mentions that Luna eventually became disillusioned with the racism she experienced in the United States. The U.S. civil rights movement was going on at the same time, but she didn’t get involved in this movement or any political activism.
Luna’s career skyrocketed after she moved to London in December 1965. She would later live in Paris and then Rome. She was living in an isolated part of Italy and was in semi-retirement at the time of her death. During her years in London, she continued to hang out with the rich and famous and dated some celebrities, including Rolling Stones lead guitarist Brian Jones and actor Klaus Kinski. Luna can be seen as an assistant to a fire eater in the music variety film “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus,” which was filmed in 1968, but wasn’t released until 1996.
Two very famous photographers are mentioned in the documentary as having the most influence on Luna’s supermodel career: Richard Avedon (an American who died in 2004, at the age of 81) and David Bailey, a Brit who is interviewed in the documentary. Bailey says that he was vaguely aware of racism in the fashion industry, but he claims that he wasn’t one of the racists. Bailey comments about Luna: “I didn’t think about her being black. She was just someone who was beautiful.”
The general consensus is that Luna found greater acceptance in Europe than she did in the United States. However, that doesn’t mean that she never stopped experiencing racism. The documentary includes a heartbreaking account of racist decisions made by Diana Vreeland (American Vogue’s editor-in-chief from 1963 to 1971) that blocked Luna from getting major career opportunities. In the documentary, former supermodel Johnson begins to cry when she hears the details. “It’s an accumulation of all the pain,” Johnson says of her crying over the racism that she, Luna and many other black people have experienced.
Other emotionally touching segments in the documentary have to do with Luna’s only child: a daughter named Dream Cazzaniga, who was only 18 months old when Luna died. Cazzaniga, who was raised by her father’s parents in Italy, reads many of Luna’s journal entries in the documentary. Luna was a talented illustrator, and the documenatry includes some of her art. Cazzaniga also candidly shares her thoughts on her memories of her mother and how she felt growing up without her mother, whose death is a “taboo” subject for the Cazzaniga family.
Because “luna” means “moon” in Spanish and in Italian, Luna often told people she had a special connection to the moon. Near the beginning of the documentary, Cazzaniga can be heard in a voiceover saying, “Growing up in Italy, I remember seeing the moon. My nanny was telling me, ‘Oh, look, that’s your mom looking from the sky.’ I never doubted that whenever I was looking at the moon, I thought that was my blessing from her.”
Later in the documentary, Dream’s Italian father Luigi Cazzaniga, who was a photographer when he married Luna in 1976, is shown being interviewed and going with Dream to visit a few of the places where he and Luna made their lives in Italy. He describes Luna as someone who loved being a mother but she was feeling increasingly unhappy with living in a remote area where she had little or no contact with her friends she used to know as a model. Luigi’s family members, whom Dream describes as conservative and religious Catholics, rejected Luna and wouldn’t allow her inside their homes. Luigi had to frequently travel because of his photographer job, so Luna was often left home alone with Dream.
Former supermodel Pat Cleveland, whose career blossomed in the 1970s around the same time as Johnson’s career, tells a harrowing story in the documentary about how Luna seemed to be mentally unraveling over all the lies and the fake persona that Luna created for herself. Cleveland describes Luna as someone who was desperately lonely and literally begging for help in the last year of Luna’s life, when Luna confessed to Cleveland that she was really an American from Detroit. Cleveland says she felt powerles to help someone whom she didn’t know every well and who was already on a downward spiral. It’s not said out loud, but it’s implied that Luna was not getting any therapy or other professional help for her mental health issues when she was living in Italy.
Several people interviewed in the documentary give cultural and historical context to why Luna’s accomplishments in the fashion industry also came with racial burdens that might have been heavier in her lifetime but still exist for many people today. Constance White, an author and former editor-in-chief of Essence, comments on white Euro-centric standards of beauty that dominate in Western culture: “It’s something that Black women have a singular experience with.” White adds that these beauty standards often have this direct or indirect message for Black women: “Everything about you is wrong.”
Other interviewees in the documentary include fashion designer/activist Aurora James, Vogue editor-at-large Hamish Bowles, Duke University art history professor Dr. Richard J. Powell, talent agent Kyle Hagler, Richard Avedon’s former assistant Gideon Lewin and fashion designer Zandra Rhodes. Three of Luna’s close friends interviewed in the documentary are Sanders Bryant, a pal who knew her from high school; actor Juan Fernandez; who describes his relationship with Luna as being like a sibling relationship; and artist Livia Liverani, who says that Luna was frequently misunderstood.
“Donyale Luna: Supermodel” is certainly not the first documentary to be about someone who had troubles coping with fame and who eventually faded into near-obscurity. However, this documentary makes a clear case for people to learn more about Luna’s legacy—not just as a model in the fashion industry but also as a loved one who changed the lives of the people who were closest to her. Fame and money can be fleeting. The areas where Luna made the most impact cannot be measured by magazine covers or monetary amounts.
HBO premiered “Donyale Luna: Supermodel” on September 13, 2023.
A photo still of Aurora Mardiganian (voiced by Arpi Petrossian) holding her 2-year-old cousin Hrant in “Aurora’s Sunrise” (Image courtesy of Bars Media Films)
Armenian, Turkish, English, German and Kurdish with subtitles
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Aurora’s Sunrise,” which is mostly animation taking place from 1915 to 1920, features a white and Arabic group of people telling the story of Aurora Mardiganian (birth name: Arshaluys Mardigian), an Armenian refugee who fled Armenia during the Armenian genocide and relocated to the United States, where she briefly became a movie star when she starred in the 1919 silent film “Auction of Souls,” a drama that was based on her own refugee story.
Culture Clash: Mardiganian had many horrific refugee experiences, including the murders of almost all of her immediate family members, being forced into sex enslavement, and being exploited for her life story by unscrupulous journalists and filmmakers.
Culture Audience: “Aurora’s Sunrise” will appeal primarily to viewers who are interested in watching documentaries about survival stories that are told in non-traditional formats.
An archival photo of Aurora Mardiganian in “Aurora’s Sunrise” (Photo courtesy of Bars Media Films)
Haunting and inspiring, “Aurora’s Sunrise” is a creative triumph in how this non-fiction film mixes animation and archival footage to tell the empowering story of how actress/writer Aurora Mardiganian survived the Armenian genocide of the 1910s. “Aurora’s Sunrise” is not only a memorable biographical documentary, but it’s also an important history lesson.
Directed by Inna Sahakyan, “Aurora’s Sunrise” fully immerses viewers into the compelling story of Mardiganian, an Armenian whose birth name was Arshaluys Mardigian. In 1915, when she was 14 years old, her idyllic life in the Western Armenian city of Chmshkadzag was changed forever when Turks invaded Armenia and committed a genocide that lasted in 1923. To this day, many countries refuse to acknowledge that this genocide happened. The United States officially acknowledged this genocide in 2021.
“Aurora’s Sunrise,” the first animated documentary made in Armenia, was Armenia’s official selection to be considered for Best International Feature for the 2023 Academy Awards. Even though “Aurora’s Sunrise” didn’t get an Oscar nomination, it has received accolades elsewhere, including the Audience Award at the 2022 Animation Is Festival and the Audience Favorite Awards at the 2022 International Documentary Film Festival. Nearly a year after making the rounds at numerous international film festivals, “Aurora’s Sunrise” has been released in North America.
Most of “Aurora’s Sunrise” consists of animation that takes place from 1915 to 1920, based on Mardiganian’s real-life accounts of what happened to her. Interspersed with this animation are filmed interviews that Mardiganian did as an elderly woman (she died in 1994) and rare footage of the long-lost 1919 silent film “Auction of Souls,” a Hollywood-made drama starring Mardiganian in a story abut her refugee ordeal. “Auction of Souls” was a big hit and briefly made Mardiganian a movie star.
The archival interviews of Mardiganian in “Aurora’s Sunrise” are from the Zoryan Institute and the Armenian Film Foundation. Most of the narration in “Aurora’s Sunrise” are re-enactments or are inspired by what Mardiganian said in these archival interviews. “Auction of Souls” remained lost for decades, until some fragments of the movie were found several months after Mardiganian’s death. “Aurora’s Sunrise” also has archival footage of many people in Armenia during the period of time that’s discussed in the movie.
“Aurora’s Sunrise” had live actors perform many of the re-enactments, with these actors then drawn in animated form. (For the purposes of this review, the real Mardiganian s referred to as Mardiganian, while the Aurora character in the movie is referred to as Aurora.) Anzhelika Hakobyan has the live-action role of Aurora, while Arpi Petrossian does the voice work of Aurora in the animation. It’s not a technically advanced animated film, but the animation in “Aurora’s Sunrise” authentically captures many of the emotions and facial expressions that make this documentary so impactful. There’s a lot of humanity’s ugliness in this story, but there are also beautiful depictions of family love and personal resilience.
“Aurora’s Sunrise” begins with the real Mardiganian shown in archival footage opening up a rolled-up canvas portrait painting of herself and “Auction of Souls” co-stars Irving Cummings and Anna Q. Nilsson in a scene where they are coming out of the desert and looking for water. In a re-enactment voiceover, Aurora says that even though she became a Hollywood star as a teenager because of “Auction of Souls,” she wasn’t really an actress. “I was not acting. I was reliving.”
The movie is told in chronological order and begins with Aurora describing her happy childhood, as one of eight siblings raised by their married parents (played by Hambardzum Ghazanchyan and Tamara Chalkhifalaqyan) in a tight-knit and loving middle-class family. Aurora’s younger siblings were brother Hovnan (the youngest, played by Sergey Gasparyan), sister Sara (played by Ani Ghazaryan), sister Arusyak (played by Karina Gasparyan) and brother Martiros (played by Rafael Melqonyan). Aurora’s older siblings were sister Poghos (Vahagn Tulbenjyan), brother Lusineh (played by Sushan Abrahamyan), and brother Vahan (the eldest), who does not live with the family because he has been living in the United States for the past 10 years.
Aurora shares fond memories of watching her silk maker father Kirakos Mardigian (voiced by Ruben Ghazaryan) grow silk in the family’s greenhouse. He liked to dye the silk cocoons in bright shades of green, blue, gold and purple. The results made the silk garden look magical. This garden becomes a symbol in the movie for many of Aurora’s happiest family memories before the Armenian genocide destroyed so many lives. Aurora’s mother (voiced by Ani Toroian) doesn’t say much, but she is a kind and peaceful parent.
In the narration, Aurora says that one night, her father was visited by a Kurdish shepherd friend (played by Harut Galstyan, voiced by Mher Gabrielyan), who warned Kirakos that Turks would be invading this part of Armenia. The shepherd advised that the Mardigian family should evacuate and hide in the mountains. Aurora remembers that her father stubbornly refused to take this advice because he believed that to flee would be showing cowardice. He also believed that if he was going to die in an invasion, he would die in his own home.
Unfortunately, Aurora’s father turned out to be wrong in his predictions. A few days after getting this warning, he and son Lusineh were taken from their home by Turk invaders, forced to serve in the Turkish military, and were never seen by the family again. Aurora and the rest of her family were taken from their home by Turkish soldiers and forced with other women and children to trek across the desert while suffering unconscionable abuse, including whippings, beatings, and other forms of torture. Women and girls were often raped.
Other horrors that Aurora experienced won’t be described in full details here, but it’s enough to say that there are scenes of her witnessing family members and many other people getting murdered; experiencing starvation and other dangers while being trapped in a war zone; and being forced into sex enslavement. These traumas are not depicted in overly graphic ways in “Aurora’s Sunrise,” but sensitive viewers or very young viewers might find some of these images too unsettling to watch.
The retelling of Aurora’s story is handled with a great deal of empathy and care without making any of her ordeal seem trivial. “Aurora’s Sunrise” isn’t just a war story. It’s also a look at how the media can make a difference in charitable efforts to help survivors of wars. The top-notch “Aurora’s Sunrise” musical score—performed by the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra and the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra—is very effective at conveying and stirring up emotions.
Even though the real-life Mardiganian experienced the worst of humanity, what’s hopeful about her story is that she also experienced the best of humanity from some people who helped her get out of her horrible situations. One of these compassionate people is American socialite/philanthropist named Mrs. Harriman (played by Tamara Iskandaryan and voiced by Sara Anjargolian), who is based on the real-life Mrs. Oliver Harriman, also known as Grace Carley Harriman. “Aurora’s Sunrise” is also an admirable cinematic testimonial to how someone can find inner strength in the midst of tragedy.
Bars Media Films released “Aurora’s Sunrise” in New York City on August 11, 2023, in Los Angeles on August 18, 2023, and in Toronto on September 1, 2023.
